I was excited and could hardly wait for each of my children. I love each one and wanted each one.
Jill was the first, a girl, blond and a mind of her own from the very beginning. She was a good baby except at nap time. She would dress up in the most awful combination of clothes when she was little. She didn’t learn to walk until she was 14 months old because we lived in a trailer house and she could go anywhere she wanted to by holding onto something. She didn’t play much with dolls but would direct a play or a parade. We had lots of parades when she was small.
When she was 6 years old she was hit by a car and was in the hospital for 7 weeks. She broke her femur bone in her left leg and her right hand, also had a concussion and bruised kidney. She didn’t go to school much the winter of her first grade but had a home teacher.
She was a good student, in lots of plays, and sterling scholar in drama and speech her senior year. She was also in pep club her junior and senior year.
She went to BYU 1 quarter then married our neighbor boy John Larsen. They had 5 children. While she was having her children she was in city politics for Highland City, took painting classes, and held many church jobs and was involved in family genealogy. Later, as the children were older she went back to school and graduated from BYU with her youngest daughter, Samantha. She now teaches at the BYU. I always enjoyed our relationship and I enjoy it more now.
She didn’t get to be the baby very long because her sister, Susan, arrived just 15 month later. She [Jill] was born Easter morning and her father was in the Army at Camp Ord California so she was 3 days old before he knew she had arrived. She lived in Utah, Texas, and Kentucky before she was a year old.
Susan our second was as different as two girls could be. She was dark where Jill was blond, she loved her dolls and played with them all the time. She was a good baby. Born in Kentucky while Russell was still in the army and he was not at her birth either because he left the hospital to go back to our trailer to check on Jill who was left with neighbors. She cost us $5.75. She was a real easy birth weighing only 5 lbs. 6 oz. When she was 5 months old Russell was discharged from the army and we moved to Logan, Utah to attend the Utah State University. Susan had to have everything match, from the barrette in her hair to her stockings. She never got dirty, even when they played. She won a baby contest while we were at Logan.
From Logan we moved to Granger it was called at that time. Jill was in first grade and couldn’t find her shoes for school so she had to wear Susan’s new suede Sunday shoes. She [Jill] had them on the day she was hit by a car. The shoes were lost and Susan was really upset over this—much more than her sister getting hit by a car.
When we moved to Highland the next house which was 1/2 mile to us was a girl her age, Karen Larson, and they became best friends, always together. I was their 4H teacher and they had to make a simple apron. I made Susan unpick her’s until it was perfect. Karen’s mother made hers and she won a prize for it. But when they started Jr. High Susan got a wonderful sewing teacher named Mrs. Porter. She taught Susan so well the she [Susan] became a wonderful seamstress, making all her drapes, pillows, things to make her home lovely, beautiful clothes for her 3 daughters, and lots of wedding dresses for nieces and her daughters. Also lots of sewing for her mother.
She was so tender headed it was a nuisance to do her hair. One Summer day in Granger the bathroom window was open and I was washing her hair in the bath tub and she cried so loud the neighbor rushed in to see what was the matter.
She was also in pep club. In about 6th grade she started to hold hands with a boy who lived down the street. She married him after he came home from his mission. She worked so Mark could go to school. The sealer in the temple told them not to put off having a family while he was in school. I know the Lord told them this because the older Susan got the more trouble she had with miscarriages, so they were thankful for their 3 girls.
At one time Jill and Susan were Relief Society President and Mariann was 1st counselor so all three of our girls were in the Relief Society at the same time. At this writing she works in the Draper Temple and her husband Mark is the Bishop. We like the same things and one time bought the same sweater set, she in SLC me in Yuma.
Bruce our first sone and the first grandson on my side of the family was the biggest baby I had 7 lbs. 15 oz. The doctor said if he would have weighed him before he peed he would have been a 8 pound baby. He had a pretty hard time getting here because he was breach. He had red hair and Russell was there for the birth. Everyone was just thrilled that he was a boy. Such joy for our whole family. I don’t know for sure but I think his lungs were not totally developed because he had pneumonia twice by the time he was 3 months old. Once at 6 week, once at 3 moths and he has had lung problems all his life. He fell out of a tree at Dwaine and Rhoda Barney’s when he was about 5. He was really high up when he fell. I rushed him to the Richfield hospital where they took every x-ray possible and found nothing—he was a tough little guy.
He was always very independent and at about 10 he rode his bicycle about a mile to milk cows night and morning. Russell’s Uncle Spencer bought some ground about 2 miles from our place. It had lots of fruit trees and many little pine trees that needed to be watered. Russell was working in Jackson [Wyoming] for a construction company so it was up to Bruce and me to do the watering. At 3 in the morning we would go in the pitch dark with only a flashlight to help us and put in the large canvas dams that would send the water to the trees only to find out some mornings that our Bishop had come after us and sent the water to his place. When I look at 10 year olds now I am amazed at the responsibility that little boy assumed.
He was also a Sterling Scholar in Industrial Arts in his senior year but could not accept it because he had missed so much school skiing. When we found out he wasn’t going to school Russell took him to Trade Tech where he earned enough credit to graduate from high school plus 1 year of college. He graduated from trade tech the next year and received an associates degree in heating and refrigeration. He has been in that business all the rest of his life. He now works for his so Charlie who owns his own business called B2.
Bruce built his first home when he was 19 years old. I have always been proud of him. He is now shift supervisor at the Mount Timpanogas Temple. He sent 2 of his 3 boys on missions and all 3 are eagle scouts. His daughter is working on an engineering degree at this time.
Our fourth child, Ted, was due the first part of April so on March 21st I felt so good that I took all the curtains down in the house, washed and starched them, and got them ready to iron (in those days everything needed to be ironed). We had planned to go out to dinner that night because it was our wedding anniversary. I was sitting on the front lawn talking with our neighbor, Lee Christensen, when my water broke so that night I spent in the St. Marks hospital and not out to dinner. Ted was born at 6 the next morning making his birthday March 22. We were over joyed to have another son making 2 daughters and 2 sons.
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